Payment and settlement statistics

RTGS settles individual payments in CHAPS, the same-day electronic funds transfer service for high-value sterling payments.

CHAPS direct participants can choose:

1. To settle payments immediately (subject to available liquidity) as ‘urgent’ CHAPS payments or

2. To accept some delay in settlement to improve liquidity efficiency and submit them as ‘non-urgent’ CHAPS payments.

The choice of which CHAPS settlement service to use is entirely at the discretion of the participant. Non-urgent settlement is usually available from 06:00 until 17:30, after which outstanding non-urgent payments are auto-promoted to urgent. Participants may choose to reschedule individual CHAPS payments from non-urgent to urgent, and vice versa, until the point of settlement. On average, non-urgent payments settle around eight minutes after submission into RTGS. The processes in the RTGS infrastructure to support these two CHAPS services are run in parallel and the availability of each is reported separately.

3. Ability of RTGS and the RTGS-CREST link to support settlement in CREST

These functions are required to facilitate transfers of central bank money, arising from securities transactions between CREST participants, across the accounts held by CREST settlement banks at the Bank of England. This relies on technical links between the Bank’s RTGS infrastructure and the CREST infrastructure, operated by Euroclear. A period when CREST settlement is unavailable due to an incident with RTGS or the RTGS-CREST link to support settlement in CREST is recorded. However, CREST settlement can continue to operate even if RTGS is unavailable, by using contingency procedures.

4. Net interbank settlement of retail payment systems

Seven sterling retail payment systems (Bacs, cheque-based Image Clearing System, FPS, LINK, Mastercard Europe, PEXA and Visa Europe) settle their net obligations, arising from customer transactions, at defined points in time during the RTGS settlement day. A delay to the execution of these net settlements that results from an RTGS incident is recorded. RTGS does not provide the infrastructure for the exchange (or ‘clearing’) of individual payment instructions in these payment systems, so the availability of that system to its end-users is not dependent on RTGS availability.

5. RTGS Enquiry Link is the online graphical user interface (GUI) that holders of a reserves or settlement account use to manage their accounts. CHAPS participants also use this GUI for CHAPS payment queue management (the ‘central scheduler’). Any period where it is not available during the RTGS settlement day is recorded.

Until 17 June 2016, the CHAPS settlement day was 6am to 4.20pm.

• All data are daily averages of transactions settled within the RTGS system.
• CREST DvP activity in RTGS is measured by the debits applied to CREST settlement accounts at the end of each CREST settlement cycle, not the total volume or value of transactions in CREST itself.
• Retail payment system (FPS, Bacs, cheque-based Image Clearing System, LINK, Mastercard Europe, Visa Europe) values represent the net value of each system’s settlement across RTGS. Net settlement for retail payment systems takes place within defined clearing cycles at specific points during the RTGS operating day. Therefore, no volumes data is available.
• Visa Europe began settling net interbank obligations across RTGS in November 2013.
• Mastercard Europe began settling net obligations across RTGS in July 2021

*On 24 February 2021 a technical failure occurred on the link between the Bank of England and the CREST system at the start of the operational day. An established contingency procedure was invoked, enabling the Bank to provide start of day liquidity for CREST settlement. A reconciliation break on one of the accounts led to a further delay whilst the cause was identified and resolved, at which point CREST settlement resumed. CHAPS settlement was unaffected. 

**The Faster Payments System (FPS) clearing was delayed due to a technical issue which prevented the clearing message being sent to RTGS on time. Pay.UK’s (the operator of FPS) third party technology provider fixed the issue and the clearing settled at 17:43 (38 minutes late).

***On 20 July, following a connectivity issue on a network component hosted by a third party supplier of SWIFT, an RTGS matching cycle was interrupted requiring manual intervention to re-start it. This ultimately delayed CHAPS settlement by 5 minutes.

**** The MasterCard clearing was delayed by a total of 34 minutes on 11th August due to a delayed settlement file transfer via SWIFT. They also encountered an additional 6 minute delay on 23rd August for which the root cause is being investigated. Additionally, ICS scheme clearing was delayed by 121 minutes on 19th August due to disruptions in access portal connectivity, which impacted message file submissions to them and the subsequent sending of the clearing to the BoE.

***** On 8 September, there was a delay of 45 minutes to the first Faster Payments Service (FPS) settlement cycle. This was due to a FPS participant having insufficient funds in their settlement account. On 9 September, there was a 90 minute delay to LINK settlement, which was due to a technical issue at Vocalink and meant that the settlement required manual completion.

******The Mastercard clearing was delayed by a total of 32 minutes on 26 October which was due to a technical issue at Mastercard.

* Enquiry Link was available, but some users experienced intermittent access on Monday 20 January between 06:00 and 07:56 due to a technical problem.

** Enquiry Link was available but some users experienced intermittent access on both 13 and 22 May due to a technical problem.

***Whilst the RTGS-CREST link was available, CREST itself experienced technical issues on Friday 11 September (which required a Non Standard CREST Closure at the end of the day) and Monday 14 September. 

****Whilst the RTGS-CREST link was available, CREST itself experienced technical issues on 6 and 10 November.

*****The Image Clearing System (ICS) clearing was delayed due to an issue with the ICS system which impacted the ICS participants’ ability to confirm the payments. Pay.UK fixed the issue and the clearing settled at 19.01 (2 hours 31 minutes late).